Of Dreams and Acceptance
by le-renegat
Summary: I'd rather die instead, because then there're no dreams and we can finally release our souls and everything ends. Ichigo/Rukia; post-423, pre-424.


**Fandom:** Bleach

**Pairing:** Ichigo/Rukia, ichiruki

**Disclaimer/warnings:** Bleach is not mine. It belongs to Kubo Tite. Also, it's been a while since I've last written anything in English, so bear with me.

These are three different (related or unrelated) takes on Ichigo's life after Rukia left.

* * *

><p><strong>I.<strong>

He sits abruptly, hair damp with sweat and legs trapped, tangled with the dry and sickly white sheets. It is summer and the moon is high up in the sky _(he doesn't care)_. The heat is _(almost)_ unbearable; he feels a tart and horrid taste clinging to the back of his mouth.

He looks around and it's quiet _(it makes him feel even more nauseous)_, devoid of breath or noise or movement. He turns his torso _(head hanging, hovering by the side of the bed, eyeing the floor intently)_ and, after an ugly gurgling sound, vomits the entirety of his stomach's contents.

_Dying is like sleeping_.

It takes a few minutes _(hours?)_ for his body to stop shaking so violently, and the smell of gastric acid and semi-digested food impregnates the room. After another round of gurgling and string muscle spasm, bile splashes atop the mess.

He stands slowly _(sloppily), _stepping on his own vomit, the pasty substance sliding and crawling in-between his toes _(he still doesn't care)_.

He'd dreamt of her again.

As he walks towards the bathroom, further spreading the mess, he unconsciously presses his fist to his upper abdomen, heartburn so strong he almost falls over _(to think about her now would only intensifies it)_. He stares at the man _(the boy?)_ in the mirror – dead eyes and ginger stubble – and although he doesn't speak, he can hear his own voice softly whisper.

How pathetic, huh.

He rinses his mouth thoroughly, fingers and hands shivering violently in a mess of movement _(which he was sure she would disapprove of)_. He then grips the sink tightly, face white.

_Though as you sleep, you dream._

He can't seem to sleep properly these days. And sure, while the heat wasn't exactly helping, it is the dreams he has that makes it unbearable.

God, he misses her.

Everyone seems to think _(even _her_, for that matter)_ he will outgrow her absence. That it is just a too-young boy missing his dear friend _(was she, really?)_, the lack of thrill his new life has to offer or even that he can't bear not being able to protect everyone.

There is that too, he won't deny it – to himself, actually, because he _does _hide it from everyone else.

He won't think about the cheesy "she stopped the rain inside me" _(she would surely laugh at him for ever thinking about it)_. He is much too old for that now – he just plain misses her presence, her long-ish black hair brushing his arm, her voice and her tone when she scolded him, her small figure clothed in that almost-too-big hakama when she fought beside him.

He can't bear not having her by his side remembering how it was – it just hurts too much.

He can't move on.

The prospect of going to college and finding a joband having a too-nice, too-beautiful girlfriend _(she wouldn't be jealous, she'd just smile) _and just live it away makes his stomach churn in a disgust he doesn't really know where comes from.

That's why he vomits once again, white ceramic tinged yellowish-green with his bile. A lone tear escapes his right eye _(maybe because of the state his body's in, maybe because of her)_ and we wonders if it's all really worth it.

_I'd rather die instead, because then there're no dreams and we can finally release our souls and everything ends._

.

**II.**

Bidding her adieu sure was not easy, but it eventually grows into something soft and comfortable – like being immersed full-body in hot water. He doesn't ever see her; he's too preoccupied to spare a thought, no one ever mentions her again.

High school comes to an end, and he feels nothing, no void in his soul as people take his picture, diploma clutched tightly to his left hand. She wasn't there. It's not as if she belonged there – she was dead, she was a warrior. He had no right and no place missing her freakishly short form beside him.

It's not as if he didn'tfeel guilty – damn, he had liked her. A lot (and quite frankly, he _still_ did).

But it's quite funny. As quickly as human beings grow used to someone's presence and wonder how they had ever lived apart from them, they also accustom to absence. He wouldn't get his powers back; she wouldn't come for him either – settled.

He got more and more used to having Inoue by his side, strong wind making her long hair brushing his hand instead of his arm as they walked through the streets. She gibbered a lot, stuttering and blushing constantly and while it annoyed him to no end, he _grew used _to it.

He accustomed to having Ishida pretending he hated him, then quietly asking him – whenever he stood alone in his house's roof – whether he was alright or not. He stopped hanging around Chad (and it actually pained him to no end); he knew that, for him, he'd become something he couldn't stand to look at anymore. Keigo'd still follow him around and it was the most of those golden days he'd have in his everyday life.

He'd go out and he'd date, not really regretting his first kiss hadn't been with her (even though he still wanted to kiss her). Relationships suddenly didn't seem to be undecipherable mysteries or didn't even seem to matter much to him. He grew up so obediently and nicely Wendy would be proud.

Life passed by and he stood there – as mostly everyone does, really –, watching, silently and sadly fingering some other drawing she had left behind atop his desk.

But sometimes – in the dark insomniac hours – he stares at his closet's closed doors, eyes glazed and lightheaded, seeing her faint short-haired form hanging in the air…

… and he wondered (and secretly yearned) if it could have ever ended differently.

.

**III.**

He liked watching her.

He liked how her nails were too short and how she still had cuticles. She nagged to no end when Inoue and Matsumoto tried to girl-her-up and he found that he secretly enjoyed her lack of femininity.

He kind of liked how she read horror manga and how she desperately hid her porn from him, even though she _still_ lived in his closet. He liked watching her fingers with her too-short nails turning the pages – silently snickering when she passed through what he assumed was a rather dirty part.

He liked how even her custom-tailored hakama seemed too big on her; he enjoyed stealing Yuzu's clothes just so he could see her spinning about in front of his mirror, modestly-but-not-too-much admiring herself.

He could only stare when she played with her gigai. She cupped her own breasts on top of her – Yuzu's, really – dress, going on and on about the softness of them, making Kon pass out on the process. He internally laughed when she called Urahara a pervert, saying she'd rescue Ururu from his shop before it was too late.

He liked having her by his side, sitting on his closet while he read out passages from Shakespeare's plays (she liked _The tempest _best, as she said it wasn't as tragic and stupid as the rest of them).

He liked when his back hit hers when they were out hollow-hunting, her tiny bone structure firmly fitting in his brute and tall one.

He knew it wouldn't end well – and it would end, because everything does. He knew and he forced himself to accept it, because the brevity of it was what made it so beautiful in the first place.

She wasn't forever, she wasn't his.

It saddened him, but he didn't mind.

.

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><p>The hole <em>dying is like sleeping<em> thing comes from João Ubaldo Ribeiro's _Sargento Getúlio_, in a rather long passage in which he says (roughly translated by yours truly) that

_[…]Life is too long and bears too many disasters. Who actually stands the oncoming old age and fake orders, jealousy, delays, things we can't possibly understand and ungratefulness when we don't deserve it, if one can get rid of it with a simple knife? Who actually stands this weight in this life which only brings sweat and fights? The ones who stand it are those afraid to die, because no one has come back from there and it just wavers our resolve to die. And we go on standing bad things, just so we don't experience other things we don't know about yet._


End file.
